Maintenance Information About Hard Disk

Content:

Hard Disk Maintenance

Signs of hard disk failure

1. S.M.A.R.T troubleshooting tips. This is a built-in automatic detect program in hard disk. It means that there are some physical faults in your hard disk.
2. Frequent but irregular crashes, especially while booting up Windows.
3. Error occurs when we are running a program , or the OS even gets crashed when we are scanning disk.
4. A number of errors or bad sectors are scanned out. And the checking procedure of Windows will report in detail.
5. Hard disk cannot be recognized in BIOS. Or it can be found in BIOS but Windows cannot find it. This is the most serious breakdown.

Maintenance tips of hard disk

1. Be careful about the surrounding environment
Hard disk uses breathing hole which has a super-fine filter to communicate with the outside world. And it can work in the indoor environment that doesn't have a purification device. Using it in hot, cold, dusty or humid circumstances will make the disk suffer from damage.

2. Shut down the computer in right order
Please pay attention to hard drive light in the panel. Only when the light stops flicking, you can turn down the computer. Preventing the machine from being shut down improperly may make the hard disk get rid of destroy.

3. Don't move the hard disk when it is running.
When the disk runs at high speed, gentle shake may generate friction between head and disk platter. In the process of mounting or dismounting, behaviors like violent shaking or collision should be avoided.

4. Reduce frequent operations on a program or on an operation system
Reading and writing on the same part of a hard disk will produce bad tracks. You can install two operation systems to avoid reading and writing on a sector for a long time.

5. Properly use the hard disk
Under the environment of high temperature in summer, you'd better make your hard disk work for less than 10 hours. What's more, it shouldn't work continuously for 8 hours.

6. Defragment that drive at fixed period
Due to frequent operations, free sectors in disks will be scattered to discontinuous parts of the disk. Thus the files can not be kept to continuous sectors. When reading and writing, the head will move back and forth, which will slow down the disk access speed and influence disk service time. Making defragmentation at regular intervals is really a must.

Note: Since the writing way is different from Windows, Linux or Mac OS don't need to clean up the fragments.

Please click here to know the benefits of defragmentation and how to defrag in Windows 7.

7. Provide stable power supply
Users should use the power with stable performance. Once the power supply is not stable or insufficient, it will be easy to cause data loss or damage to hard disk.

8. Don't force the computer to shutdown
This will produces strong friction between the hard disk and the head pointer. After a long time, the hard drive track will get damaged.